Movie review: ‘Nutcracker and the Four Realms’ gets by on style

Dana Barbuto More Content Now

Wednesday

Oct 31, 2018 at 5:49 PMNov 1, 2018 at 8:48 AM

Disney’s “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” is a visual stunner, a whimsical swirl of candy colors, gauzy textures and sumptuous costumes that make the screen glisten. Based equal parts on E.T.A. Hoffman’s 1816 short story, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” and Marius Petipa’s enduring 1892 two-act ballet, the movie is simply gorgeous, as breathtaking as any production of it I’ve ever seen. Toss in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s glorious score, a cast and crew that includes Oscar-winners and a fresh-faced leading actress and what could go wrong? How much time do you have?

Enchantment and style can only take you so far. The script is predictable. You’ll find yourself reciting the dialogue before the words leave the actors’ lips. There’s not enough of Tchaikovsky’s music or Morgan Freeman. And why in the world is Helen Mirren made up to look like Mrs. Garrett from “The Facts of Life?” And don’t get me started on THAT totally unearned twist. My eyes are still rolling. Also, the title is misleading (possibly to cash in on the “Nutcracker” brand?) “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” is 100 percent Clara’s story and she’s played with adorable charm by Mackenzie Foy (“Interstellar”). The titular nutcracker (Jayden Fowora-Knight) is just a cute soldier named Philip who joins Clara on her magical quest. As twee as they may be together, I dug their pairing.

Lasse Hallstrom and Joe Johnston tag team the directing duties. Ashleigh Powell and Tom McCarthy share scriptwriting credit in adapting Hoffman’s original fairytale. This “Nutcracker” isn’t the ballet we all know and love, though it has balletic elements, including a show-stopping performance from ballerina goddess Misty Copeland. (Stick around for the credits as she dances an encore). The rest of the story, well, it’s just Disney cliché, right down to a dead mother propelling the action. Yup, Disney sure does like its dead parents. At this point, it might be easier to list movies in which either Mom or Dad are on the right side of the grass than to name the more than 30 titles in which one or the other is six feet under.

“The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” is the latest movie to be built around a child’s grief over losing a parent. In this case, it’s Clara, a “clever” girl who journeys into a magical alternate universe where she bravely faces down evil mice, tin soldiers and creepy clowns. Clara and her family — brother, Fritz (Tom Sweet), and sister, Louise (Ellie Bamber) — are mourning their mother’s recent death. Things are strained between Clara and her father, whom she accuses of being fixated on keeping up appearances.

During a Christmas Eve party, the script dispatches Clara to the Realms to search for the key to a special gift. She is sent there by her godfather, Drosselmeyer (Freeman). Once there, Clara finds conflict between the regents presiding over the three Realms — Land of Snowflakes, Land of Flowers and Land of Sweets — and Mother Ginger (Mirren), the tyrannical ruler of the ominous Fourth Realm. Keira Knightley has the showy role of the kitten-voiced Sugarplum Fairy, decked out in a sublime plum-colored gown with a purple cotton-candy pouf of hair and lavender eyelids. Yes, she apes Effie from the “Hunger Games” franchise. The other two regents, Eugenio Derbez and Richard E. Grant, don’t have much to do.

What more or less transpires is a battle of good versus evil and Clara’s discovery of her inner strength, all pretty typical of Disney and very wholesome family entertainment. The audience I watched with was spellbound. The action moves along at a brisk pace, and while Clara encounters danger, she’s never truly in peril. There’s no real tension. The stakes don’t feel high. The “scariest” part is probably the icky rodents that chase her through the Realms.

Clara is characterized as a girl who doesn’t feel at home in the real world. She likes to tinker and invent and rises to the occasion when the script calls on her to be brave. She’s a true Disney heroine, an apt role model who does not need any rescuing. It’s a message Disney has broadcast for a while — and it’s a good one. But why does it all have to perpetuate with a dead mother?

— Dana Barbuto may be reached at dbarbuto@patriotledger.com or follow her on Twitter @dbarbuto_Ledger.